


Redstone Lamps and Fuzzy Cats

by Lunaraen



Category: MCSM, Minecraft Story Mode
Genre: Developing Relationship, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 05:08:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11456634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunaraen/pseuds/Lunaraen
Summary: This is why Olivia doesn't like drinking. Sober her and drunk her are similar enough, except that drunk her has a nonexistent filter and absolutely none of the control sober her does.She's pretty sure that's how she ends up with a date with Maya, anyway.





	Redstone Lamps and Fuzzy Cats

It starts with a party.

Because of course it does. What doesn't start with bad decisions made in crowded, loud areas?

Oh, and drinks.

There are a lot of drinks.

Music is blaring, loud and thumping, mixed and muddled with so many conversations, so many different sounds, and the people around her can best be described as a blurry wave of energy, and Olivia stands in the middle of it trying to take it all in while also trying her hardest to not get trampled. The sky's as clear as it ever gets, filled with stars and a full moon that manages to glow even brighter than the abundance of torches surrounding the party.

Olivia doesn't usually go to parties, but it's after another failed building competition and she thinks Axel has something to do with her going. He usually does.

She's not the type to try and go to these things on her own. All the same, she loses him not three minutes in, and there are five more minutes of uncomfortably skirting the edges and thinking about going home before a song she likes starts to play and she manages to get her hands on a drink.

(There are bright lights and loud noises and it isn't good for her growing headache but for one night she's going to have fun and forget that she's a loser. It's a promise that she makes herself, as empty as it feels as she downs the first drink.)

The thing about this party is that it's a step away from being a full on festival, full of noises and pretty much open to whoever walks by and is interested enough to get closer. Which is nice, if only because it means none of them are obligated to act like they know or care about anyone but the people they came with, but along the way, Olivia manages to pick up a friend along with several drinks.

This is why Olivia doesn't like drinking. Sober her and drunk her are similar enough, except that drunk her has a nonexistent filter and absolutely none of the control sober her does.

She's pretty sure that's how she ends up with a date with Maya, anyway. She still can't remember much of the night, though she's pretty sure her train of thought basically went "I know this person, she's pretty. I don't remember how I know her but I don't care. She looks like a good kisser. I think I'll have another drink because what the heck, it couldn't hurt. I bet she's not that good a kisser so why don't I go find out."

Unfortunately for her, Maya is a good kisser and the drink does hurt in that it worsens the monster of a hangover that makes the less than subtle note even more confusing.

It has a sloppily written address on it, letters big and almost trailing off the paper towards the end, and it's as good a reason as any to get up and drag herself across town before noon. Really, Olivia does it just to let Maya know she's not stupid and she's not falling for any of Maya's tricks. Being asked out as a joke isn't her idea of a good laugh.

She's definitely not stupid, and that's why she's stumbling across town, feeling half dead and getting worse as the bright sunlight makes her head throb like it's been hit several times with a shovel.

(She's still not really all there and by the time she realizes she should've just shown Maya up and never brought it up again, she's knocking on Maya's door, so it's a little too late to turn back and way too bright to seriously consider it.)

That’s when she finds out, thanks to a note Maya has from her in large looping letters, that she’s the reason she has Maya’s address. She was generous enough to insist on meeting up at Maya’s instead of the other way around.

She's also apparently a romantic, and stupid, when she's drunk, and if she never sees a drink again it'll be too soon.

At least Maya ends up letting her in, instead of slamming the door on her face like Olivia expects.

Stupidly romantic and drunk her also apparently didn’t account for the hangovers. The two of them end up helping each other survive the day, lying down on a couch in Maya’s living room, the curtain’s drawn and thankfully heavy enough to bring the room to the point of being less head-splittingly bright and more bearably dim. Really, most of the afternoon is spent ignoring each other while also occasionally asking if the other’s okay and if they could use some more water too.

That's how Olivia ends up spending the night. When she wakes up, arms hanging off the couch and her body awkwardly splayed on one half, it's some ridiculously early hour of the morning, but she feels a bit better, enough to know she really shouldn't be here and that hungover her is an idiot too.

By the time she wrestles the blankets off, leaving them on the couch and Maya before she attempts to sneak across the room and to the door, Maya's already started to stir, and Olivia doesn't get a chance to open the door before Maya asks her where she's going, the question slurred and mumbled. It's followed by a bit of a sharper question about why she hasn't already left.

The question seems to be more for show than anything, and there's no real heat behind Maya's tired glare as Olivia explains that she's heading back home.

And, as much as she likes to blame how she gets when she drinks, maybe Olivia's just an idiot in general, seeing as how she stops before stepping out the door to jokingly ask Maya on another date to make up for this one, her tone as dry as her throat feels.

It's not like she doesn't have her reasons for asking. Ultimately, Olivia has nothing to lose. She knows better than to fall for Maya's paper thin "joke"; Axel's one of her best friends, and he could do better in his sleep.

Maya's the one always strutting around like some sort of overstuffed peacock, and Olivia knows how much being seen with a loser would bother her. That alone makes trying worth it, just to see if she can flip this around and have it blow up in Maya's face for once.

That being said, it's still a surprise, when Maya mutters a yes before lying back down and twisting under the blankets, her legs bare while her head's entirely hidden under the fluffy covers.

Olivia knows how ruthless, how cruel and conniving, Maya can be. She has to know there's no way Olivia's going to lose this one.

She might just be underestimating Olivia, or she might've had even more to drink.

Either way, as Olivia stumbles home, following the torches into the forest and trying not to look back, she knows she never expected this.

* * *

She also has no idea what she’s expecting for the date, but something small and subdued doesn’t seem to fit the attempted humiliation plot. Olivia knows better than to let her guard down, not that she’s going to argue about a good dinner.

After a day or tinkering with inventions and plans and trying to get her mind off of yester _—_ well, two days ago, now, spending any time with one of the people she lost to shouldn’t be anything but grating.

Faking or not, though, Maya doesn’t do anything by halves.

They go out to a small restaurant in town, one that's newer than most of the other ones and still struggling to find a style to stick with, even if it’s currently going for somewhere between casual and formal and trying to make it work.

The small talk between the two of them as they wait at their table, surrounded by happy couples and groups of friends alike, is a bit awkward, at least at first, but it gets easier as the two of them talk about the party and try to piece together what even happened. Beyond the party existing and being the reason they got into this mess, a lot of it’s jumbled, and the only thing either of them can say for sure by the time they get their food is that everybody there probably had way too much to drink, themselves included.

There are a few awkward silences and pauses balanced out by times Maya actually gets Olivia to grin and the one time Olivia manages to get a laugh, a real, genuine, heart laugh instead of some hollow mocking one, out of Maya after telling her about several… complications involving her latest inventions.

After that, Olivia drops Maya off at her house again before heading back home.

And that's it. There's no real horror story or terribly embarrassing thing that happens.

Except that it's not really just "it", seeing as how they both end up agreeing on another time and place for the next date.

That date leads to another one, which leads to another one, and while this is going on, they’ve both done their best to keep everyone out of the loop, at least until someone screws up and one of them ends up mortified and humiliated.

(Except that Olivia finds herself having to be reminded of her end goal more than she should while she ends up legitimately looking forward to dates and time spent with someone who tormented her and mocked her for years.)

Not that they’re hiding anything from their friends or making it one big, dramatic secret. They’re both better than that, as petty as they can get.

They do have lives outside of their groups of friends, after all, and who they date is their business.

That being said, the rivalry’s an awkward topic they’ve both silently agreed not to talk about because it’s stupidly emotionally charged and not worth their time outside of building competitions where it’s very much expected.

(It helps when they have other things to focus on, like how Maya knows more about redstone than she lets on and is usually responsible for any redstone in any of the Ocelots’ builds.

While the subject could go sour fast, they manage to make it into mutual griping about how other builders never seem to realize how delicate or potentially disastrous redstone can be, which then turns into both of them commenting on the latest and most popular redstone inventions, which _then_ somehow turns into both of them talking about how much they appreciate Ellegaard and how incredible an inventor she is.)

The dates go from being nice breaks from work to genuinely enjoyable the more they both seem to push each other, always teetering the line between acting oblivious and clearly trying to trip the other up with going too far one way or another.

Attempting to show Maya up also involves eventually inviting her over to Olivia’s house at least once, as against Olivia’s better judgement as the idea may be, and it ends up being one of the best ridiculously cheesy dates, if only because her house is far enough away from anyone else who lives in the forest and neither of them are worried about being overheard or being practical or doing anything other than having fun.

They're both over the top even when they’re in town, constantly getting doors for each other, pulling out chairs, trying to pay for whatever gift or meal they can, pushing and pushing the entire way just to see who can be more ridiculous and dramatic.

There’s a lot of hugging and kissing too, just as over the top shows of affection and make out sessions that last way too long, in public and private areas, and regular pecks on the cheek and handholding that should in no way be ordinary for either of them, but if they’re going to do this, they’re going to have fun with it, and they certainly seem to be doing that.

They’re both waiting for the other to goof up and actually get attached, so it’s no surprise that, along with everything else, a certain phrase gets thrown around a lot too.

_I love you._

Three simple, silly little words that neither of them have meant. They're both joking and they know it, and as long as they both know it and don't mean it, it's fine.

The problem is, one day, there's a tug in Olivia's stomach as she says them as she’s wishing Maya a good night, her fingers twitching while it feels like there's some sort of energy under her skin, like redstone, crackling and waiting to get out but with nowhere to go, not yet.

And she knows, before she's even done saying them, that she now has a very big problem on her hands.

She means it.

And she knows she's in trouble.

It feels like playing with fire, except here the fire gets to decide when to burn her.

And she's waiting and waiting and waiting, and she _knows_ it's only a matter of time.

It's like it's all just been one big joke they've been trying to play on each other, and Olivia already knows who the punchline's going to hurt.

* * *

When she thinks they've hit the punchline, it isn't anything like what she expected.

Olivia's never been much of an optimist, but she supposes she's more of a realist. The apocalypse didn't exactly seem very realistic yesterday.

She's left standing in the nether with Axel and Reuben for seconds that last far too long, surrounded by fire and smoke in a place she hoped she'd never be.

She's worried, because that's what she's good at, and Petra can take of herself but being face to face with that monster that can just suck people up doesn't help her chances any, and the same can be said for Maya. If Olivia hadn't been so nervous, hadn't panicked, she could've helped them both get through the portal. She shouldn't have run in. She's lucky Jesse makes it through at all, even if her hopes soar to ridiculous levels when she sees that leather jacket before realizing Lukas is the one standing next to Jesse.

Not that she isn't glad that he's not back there with that monster, she is, but any hopes she has left are crushed when Ivor leaps through right before the portal is destroyed.

If she hadn't been so determined to save her own hide, so worried about herself, maybe more people would've gotten through. Not all of them, not with how quick the monster is or how crowded the room was when they left it, but more.

(At least Axel doesn't have to hide it when he's worrying about Petra.

She supposes she doesn't either, but honestly, having Lukas here stirs the pot enough as it is. Admitting she's worried about Maya will lead to questions, and she really doesn't want or need to deal with the confusion or any other reactions her answers will cause.)

* * *

She’ll never know how any of them survive, as grateful as she is for it and as bad as she feels that they lost Reuben as it is, but they do and everything somehow finds a way to get crazier.

Because now she’s part of some new Order of the Stone, so much has to be repaired and needs fixing, so much more needs to be rebuilt, and then there’s the chaos of dealing with the more personal aftermath of the Witherstorms, because, unsurprisingly, being sucked up by a world-eating monster leaves a lot of people needing a whole lot of comfort and therapy.

There are times when nightmares manage to wake both Olivia and Maya up during the same night

The one thing that's stayed the same is that the others don't know. If anything, because she's suddenly some sort of celebrity, their little meet-ups get even more secretive. They stop going out to places and Olivia ends up spending a lot of time in Maya's place after it gets dark and after most of her own fans, which are a new concept she's not sure how she feels about, have gone to bed or are busy with other things.

On one hand, it's a relief that Maya doesn't jump on Olivia's fame, now that she's part of the Order, but on the other, it's not hard for Olivia to see how useful being able to control and manipulate somebody with plenty of new, sudden fame and resources could be.

Olivia feels guilty for constantly looking for motives, but that's the way it's been since the beginning.

It's a little hard to remember that, when Maya's had another nightmare or comes back from therapy looking ready to just crash on the floor and not get up for days. And Notch, she might be looking for motives, but Olivia’s never going to forget how sick she felt when she didn’t know if Maya was okay or had been sucked up by the monster tearing the world apart.

She’s waiting and waiting to get hurt, but she’s not going to love Maya any less while she does.

It helps that they’re both still over the top and goofy even if it’s just in their homes, and, fake or not, Olivia appreciates Maya listening to her rant about her own worries and the problems there are in Redstonia more than she can ever say.

* * *

And then one day, Maya disappears.

Olivia thinks about it but doesn’t worry the first day, because Maya’s busy and she knows she has other things going on and that she might be staying at Aiden or Gill’s house.

The second day, she’s a little more concerned.

By the third day, with no sight of Maya and no sort of word from her, written or otherwise, she passes anxious and decides to poke around.

Maybe she’s gotten too used to being liked already, and maybe she looked too deep into being helped by the Ocelots, but it still surprises Olivia that Aiden and Gill are more than just a little unhappy to see her.

Olivia gets the door slammed in her face twice when she tries to ask both of them about it, and as much as she wants some answers, there's no way she can force any out of them.

She hasn't seen Lukas since right after they started rebuilding, she reminds herself, and Maya seemed pretty convinced he was missing. Maybe she just decided to go and find him.

Alone.

Without telling anyone.

It's not a fun mental image, so Olivia tries to remind herself as she gets back to work that Gill and Aiden aren't worried. She must've told them. Maybe they just aren't happy about her going alone, or maybe Maya’s hiding out with one of them, for whatever reason.

It's a bit of a stretch, maybe, but the alternative, which involves something serious happening and can't be proven anyhow if Olivia can't find Maya, is so much worse to think about.

So she just tells herself that as she starts thinking about all the other projects she really should get started on.

 

And then a week and a half later, Maya shows up inside Redstonia.

It’s been a busy and hectic day as it is, several pistons inexplicably breaking and needing to be fixed while three repeaters that were working fine have just quit on her, all while she tries to test out two new inventions that could either go really well or really poorly, depending on how well she can fix the parts or how desperate she is to just swap in new ones.

There’s also the looming threat of all the meetings that are coming up today, meetings and discussions involving people who don’t want her in charge and have a million better ideas than she does.

And it’s right after Olivia’s given up on a sticky piston and right before she tries to tackle the busted repeaters that she finds out Maya’s here.

Here, as in, right outside her lab.

Maya’s arguing with Calvin about something or other, sounding ready to actually tackle him, when Olivia hears her voice and tries not to freeze.

She stays still and silent for about three seconds before tossing her tools to the ground and sprinting out the door.

To put it lightly, Maya’s a mess.

She’s not ridiculously filthy, but she looks ruffled and tired, bags under her eyes and her clothes dusty even as she snaps back at Calvin with a tone Olivia didn’t know she could miss before now.

Olivia straightens things out in a way anyone else could do better, by asking Calvin to leave them alone after telling him that Maya really does know her and isn’t just crazy _—_ Maya immediately scoffing despite her looking like she’s just rolled around in a jungle _—_ , and once she’s alone with Maya, the two of them stare at each other in the silence that lasts for a little more than three seconds.

It’s the longest three seconds of her life.

Then Maya breaks down, almost like one of Olivia’s machines, body going from rigid and stiff to much more fluid and limp, her shoulders slumping while her gaze softens and her glare disappears, and before Olivia can react, Maya’s arms are around her shoulders, her arms wrapping around Maya’s waist in turn, and she thinks Maya’s either going to never let go or pass out on the spot.

A trip to Redstonia, as far away as it is, shouldn’t take more than a few days of travelling, even on foot.

(Which is exactly what it looks like Maya did, seeing as there’s no mention from Calvin or anyone else of a horse. And the nether portals are probably better protected than their own headquarters are, and she knows she'd have heard if somebody somehow got through.)

But Maya's never been to Redstonia, and while Olivia knows she knew where it was before, that doesn't mean she knew how to get there, so asking around for directions had to have taken at least a little time.

And maybe she wandered, not sure of where to go for a while, but not being able to travel at night, and having to go around unfamiliar terrain, definitely should’ve slowed Maya down plenty, good supplies and armor or not.

All the same, Maya looks like she just about went through the nether, nearly trudging her feet as she walks and paying no attention to the grime and grit in her hair and on her clothes, which is pretty much a larger red flag than anything else Olivia could think of.

Olivia cancels every meeting she's got planned and shows Maya to her room. Olivia hardly uses it herself as it is, and it looks like, no matter what else she needs, a bed’s a top priority right now.

Tired’s not the right word, not really not at all, because that just makes it sound like Maya could use some sleep. Exhausted might fit better, like Maya wants to close her eyes and not wake up for a few years, because that’s what her dragging feet and mumbled responses tell Olivia. She’s seen Maya tired, and this isn’t it.

It's not until later that night, after a long nap, a good meal, and a well needed shower, that Maya says more than a few words to her.

And it turns out the reason she left does have something to do with Lukas leaving.

More, it’s because Lukas left that Aiden’s apparently been getting antsy and even nastier than usual, and the day she left was when all three of them sort of hit their breaking point. Now that Olivia thinks about it, while Gill didn’t leave town, she hasn’t seen him around Aiden since Maya left.

There's a lot of crying. It's silent, Maya’s shaking breathing and stifled sobs the loudest any of it gets, and Maya looks like she'd rather spend an entire night outside, alone and defenseless and surrounded by monsters, than let any more tears out, but that's not really an option and the best Olivia can do is stroke her hair and hold her tight while she tries not to think about how easily any of her inventions could crush Aiden.

It's just a fight, she tells herself as she presses a kiss to Maya's forehead. It's definitely not enough to get worried about telling the others until at least tomorrow, though she has a bit more trouble convincing herself that Aiden doesn't deserve to be hunted down and punched.

Several times.

Olivia likes fixing things. It’s what she does, regardless of how confident she is in it sometimes.

And she wants to fix this so badly, but a nasty fight between best friends, one bad enough to get Maya to just up and leave her home, isn’t something easily mended. It feels more like she’s trying to glue together a lot of chipped and broken pieces, holding them together and praying they’ll work.

But they’ve both survived worse, even if right now if feels like the only thing more painful than Maya crying is Maya’s rushed apologies. It’s not a quick fix, but she doesn’t have anywhere to be right now.

These things take time and, Olivia promises herself as Maya slowly starts to calm down, her breathing finally relaxing and the tears stopping, she’ll do her best through all of it. Even if right now, her best is kissing Maya and holding her close.

And it hits Olivia, as her eyelids feel weighed down and tired, that she’s been looking for the wrong kind of punchline.

Maybe the real punchline isn’t that one of them’s faking it, that one of them has to somehow get hurt by the other.

Maybe it’s that they both managed to fall right into their own traps.

Olivia brushes part of Maya’s hair, silky and soft like it always is and nothing like the grittier mop Maya seemed to be tolerating, out of her face before pressing a kiss to her cheek.

And that’s alright with her.


End file.
